|
|
|
|
Beaumont Sobering(Galvston Daily News, January 17, 1901) Beaumont, Texas, Jan. 16---Excitement Has Been Very High The Past Week, But Things Are Getting Normal---No Deals In The Millions---Real Estate Men And Capitalists With Money To Invest Will Now Begin To Do Business. Beaumont is becoming both accustomed to and tired of the oil excitement, which has been kept up here now for six days. The intensity of the strain has exhausted everybody and all are willing to lay aside the wild speculation and take hold of this oil matter with calmness and deliberation that outside capitalists are not going to invest in this field with conditions at such a strained point as they have been. It is a certain fact that none of them have invested very heavily, save in oil leases. Notwithstanding all the talk of $100,000 deals and millions of dollars capital, the fact remains that no big deals have been made; and a very more significant fact is that all lease deals have been made by home people. This bearish tendency is not forced. It is the result of the conditions. Excitement could not keep up the same as it has been during the past week. And by virtue of the very fact that speculations were so flighty and uncertain, the situation must have been bearish. Those who have the situation closely in hand predict that tomorrow, the people, the real estate agents, and landowners, will get down to actual conditions, lay aside the deals, and awaken to the facts. Beaumont has been fearfully wrought up; there is no denying that frenzy has penetrated every mind and the blood has coursed like fire through the veins of everyone, who owned a bit of land somewhere in creation. The mind has been stunned by the possibilities of great wealth, and men have been carried farther from sound business principles than they care to admit. Tomorrow things will be straightened out more than they were today, and then the oil men and capitalists will begin to talk business. Heretofore they have stood from under and watched the wildness of the uncontrollable throng. Substantial development is dawning. Men will begin to get into the field and it will soon be known what the field is worth. If it produces like the Lucas well, there will be a revolution in store for the people of the west who use fuel. There is no longer any doubt of that. Its specific gravity is not more than 24, and no one would undertake to refine that oil, no matter what it contained. J. H. Galey, part owner of the Lucas well, on this question said to the News correspondent. "It is the most fortunate thing that could have happened in connection with this well that it is not illuminating oil. If it had been a light oil, the oil markets would have been demoralized and the oil could not have been sold at the cost of production. As it is, there will be a good market for fuel oil when the country has had time to adjust itself to using liquid fuel. The railroads will use it, every factory will make steam with it, and the steamships will carry much more power in oil than they can in coal. Mr. Galey is not disappointed over the grade of the oil; to the contrary, he is pleased with it. Preparations to stop the well today were not completed. Some necessary machinery has not arrived and the checking of the flow will not be attempted before tomorrow, if then. Visitors continue to arrive here in large numbers. Several large parties of oil men from Marietta, Ohio, and Parkersburg, W. Va., reached here this morning, and more men from Pittsburgh also arrived today. Mayor Jones of Galveston and several other Galvestonians are sightseers here today. Mr. Hugh Hamilton was here from Houston yesterday endeavoring to negotiate for the purchase of 600,000 barrels of oil for fuel. (compiled by W. T. Block)
|
|
